Google is giving Gmail a substantial update, offering better integration with G Suite apps, along with security, collaboration, and AI enhancements. This ebook offers a detailed look at the most significant new features.

From the ebook:

Gmail is getting a major overhaul, with the email client gaining a suite of new features that promise better security, easier use, and less information overload.

Google’s lead product manager for Gmail, Jacob Bank, said the changes are some of the most far-reaching that Google has made to its G Suite services to date, describing the project as a “ground-up rewrite of our flagship product.”

So what exactly is new in Gmail? Bank breaks the improvements into three main areas, covering security, intelligent assistance, and ease of use.

Security
Bank describes 2016 as “a very bad year for email, in particular for the public perception of the safety of email as a communication mechanism,” referencing “some very, very high-profile leaked emails that had serious global consequences.”

To try to restore confidence in email, Bank said the Gmail team has “been revisiting some of the fundamental assumptions about email security” and devised the following improvements.

Confidential mode
Confidential mode is designed to limit damage to a company in the event of an email hack, particularly the risk posed by email accounts offering access to “years and years worth of confidential information.”

Users will be able to designate an email as being sent in confidential mode, allowing the sender to revoke access to that email’s content, either manually or by setting it to expire at a specific time.

When an email is sent using confidential mode, Gmail doesn’t send the content of that email. Instead, a link to the content is sent. When the email is opened by the recipient, the link will be fetched and displayed as a normal email in a Gmail client. If the recipient is using a non-Gmail client, they can click on the link to access a Gmail-hosted portal, where they can see the confidential content.